Ramen
by Petronia
Summary: Manga chapter 148 (vol.17); a rather WAFFy post-elevator missing scene. It's about how Akira never eats lunch on game days. I disclaim responsibility for any food cravings induced in the reader, though.


**Ramen**

"Jerk!"

"Moron!"

"Freak!"

"Neanderthal imbecile!"

"I know _you_ are, but what am I?" Shindou said, with the air of delivering a devastatingly witty put-down, and you actually had to stop for a second and work it through in your head. By the time you recognised the need for a cutting retort Shindou had turned back to you and was asking, "do you want the roast pork or the wonton noodle?"

_"What?"_

"Ramen. Roast pork or wonton? Vegetarian? They have the spicy sesame kind too..."

So now you sit across a plexiglass-covered laminate diner table from Shindou, whom you can barely see for the steam coming off his large-size wonton bowl. He watches you contemplatively, in between bouts of inhaling ramen like it's going out of style, and you're having difficulty keeping your mind on the game. You have a wonton bowl too, ordered in that moment of divided attention, now quietly steaming in front of you. Your hands are folded in your lap. You find the concept of actual food during lunch break nauseating, and you don't know how to tell Shindou.

It occurs to you that in some indefinable way, he's much better than you at this.

"Come on," Shindou says. "We've only got twenty minutes now." You don't move, and he puts his chopsticks down in his soup. "You really _weren't_ planning on eating, were you? Don't you _ever_ eat?"

"I'll eat afterward," you say, stiffly. Shindou shakes his head in incomprehension.

"See," he says, "I could never do that. Not in a million years. Games make me hungry like I've just run a race or something. I mean, I don't notice it when I'm actually playing, but—"

"It's afterward," you hear yourself say. "When you come back." Shindou blinks at you in surprise, and then the look turns thoughtful.

"And you haven't," he said. "Not yet. Okay, I get it." He turns his attention back to his meal, and quiet descends between you. Perhaps he does understand at that. You think about making some excuse and slipping away; back to the Go Institute and that other, less-tangible place where you and Shindou _really_ understand each other, and minor evils such as hunger or conversation have no dominion. It's not the first time you've wished tournament matches were played without the half-time break. But you stay where you are, and so does your ramen, steaming in an increasingly reproachful manner.

It's beginning to smell quite appetizing.

Shindou's eyes lift toward your face, for all as if you'd spoken aloud. He says nothing, though, just reaches for the Worcestershire sauce. You take a hasty sip from your water glass, and stifle a cough when it nearly goes down the wrong way.

Shindou's lips twitch. He dumps an alarming quantity of Worcestershire sauce into his bowl.

It's possible, you think, that this – the insults, the ramen shop, the _eating_ – constitutes some arcane attempt at psychological warfare on Shindou's part. Ashiwara-san for instance has a cheerful habit of dragooning his opponents into a shared meal, as long as they appear sufficiently amenable (and no one else he knows is around). You're fairly sure some of them find this unnerving. _Arcane_ is a word that doesn't suit Shindou up front, though, now that you're looking at him and not his kifu.

You haven't _really_ looked at him. Not for ages.

He still has the hair. That's just as well, because that shock of blond is how you pick him out of a roomful of players with their heads bowed over their respective boards. (You always look for him; you still don't know what made him skip those games, and it's in the back of your mind that it might happen again.) The rest is subtly different, though, and you're at a loss to define the change. Is he thinner? He has to be taller, logically speaking, but you've grown as well so you can't judge properly. Truth is, you meant it when you said Shindou's go was all there was to him. It's been two years and four months since you last sat across a table from him, and you weren't looking at him then. Perhaps you've never looked at him at all. What you wanted out of him, that time-

Well. The less said of that the better. You don't think he understands that part.

Easier to abstract Shindou into a chronological series of games, whether viewed first-hand or as kifu. _Two_ series of games, to be precise. You know instinctively that you've found your way to the heart of the mystery, even without the exasperation of Shindou's teasing half-confirmation. The pattern is obvious in hindsight, seen from _that_ place, obvious and elegant and flawless.

But you're not there. You're here, in a ramen shop of too-too solid physicality where your elegant solution makes no logical sense, and to your dismay you're starting to feel peckish.

"Fifteen minutes," Shindou says, straight-faced. He's almost finished with his own order; there's only a bit of soup left in the bottom, and a floating bean sprout or two. "Really you're going to let that go to waste?"

"I don't—"

Shindou reaches over with his chopsticks, brazenly fishes a wonton out of _your_ ramen and pops it into his mouth.

No.

He couldn't have. You hallucinated it.

Shindou chews. Swallows. Blinks innocently.

Sinking realisation: any moment now your stomach is going to rumble.

You inhale. Exhale. If this is psychological warfare, you're going to have to fall back and consolidate your position somewhere else. You pick up your chopsticks, mentally filing away Shindou's inadequate attempt at keeping the smugness off his face: subsequent revenge to follow on the goban, at your leisure.

"Fine," you say, and dig in. It does, indeed, taste very good. Shindou has discernment in his choice of short-order dining establishments. It takes you rather less than ten minutes to polish off your ramen, and you half-expect to feel ill afterward, but your stomach remains at peace.

You don't seem to have lost track of the game, either. The progression is crystal clear, and you're impatient to get back to it. Shindou needs to be taught a lesson post-haste.

"Five minutes," you say, setting down your chopsticks. Shindou grins at you cheerfully.

"It doesn't matter too much, actually," he says. "They can't re-start _our_ game if neither of us is there."

He's right, you realise. Damn him.

Shindou stands up, fishes his wallet out of the pocket of his jeans. You reach for your own reflexively – and Shindou stops you, his hand over yours. "Hey, c'mon," he says, "my treat. Since I dragged you out here."

His fingers are warm. You look up at him and say the first thing that comes into your head, which is, "I'm going to _trounce_ you."

Shindou's grin widens. "You make it sound so easy," he says. There's a look in his eyes that you _do_ remember, and that hasn't changed at all.

Something heady unfurls inside you, then. Or maybe it's been there all along today, through the first stilted conversation and the game and the argument you can't recall a word of now. Shindou's your counterpart, you knew it by the time you were through fuseki – but now you think, he's _your_ rival. Like your go, which has belonged to you for as long as you remember. It's in your hands and in your memories; in your dreams, in your blood too. Just another part of you. What you've never had is something that wasn't part of you, but that was yours all the same.

It makes a difference.

You're going to want to play him again, no matter how it turns out today. Maybe at your father's go parlor. You could mention it to him after the game.

Soon.

"Come on," Shindou says. "Let's go."

* * *

_— Montreal, March 2003_


End file.
